Leo Strauss' Crisis of Our Time

Welcome back to the new thing. Green, my name is David Barr. And hey, David Barr. Hey, Greg McBrayer.

How are you, my good French? Just tired of being third fiddle here. And my good friend Alex for you. And then there's some joking.

And then Greg. So no, no, no, it's your company. I was jumping the gun. No, no, no, no.

It's quite all right. You'll lead the deficit. I don't have anything else interesting to say. That was just that was all answered.

How are you doing, Alex? I'm doing well. Happy to be with you guys. And my wife just brought me beer.

Thank you, honey. Oh, very nice. Congratulations, Alex. Yeah, you should already get a promise.

You should already get it though. He's just closed on a home. So he also just closed on a house. That's right.

You had to promise her close to $1 million, I think. Yeah. But congratulations, Alex. Thank you.

Thank you. Today is another Strauss episode. Alex, what's going on? Greg and I were chatting about this earlier.

That Alex, you know, all of a sudden, you'll start pushing these Strauss episodes. And there's so much to pick from. We get these, it's like, I'm not a steer essays, but this was here. It's OK.

Yeah. And Alex is like really pumped up. So do you have a secret Manhattan project that you're working on now? I've been reading a lot of Strauss because I've worked on a couple of things on him.

But the reason I chose this, which is admittedly not as commonly read as obviously there's this book saying everything is one, I like the essays because it gives a listener an opportunity to read something that's not huge, 150 pages, 20 pages, whatever it is, you know, to say nothing about Don's own monkey value or something. But two, I find that this piece in particular, we're doing, it's a pair of essays called The Crisis of Our Time and then The Crisis of Political Philosophy. But these were published in 1963. And it's a kind of, if you want to read The City of Man, but you just want to sort of prime of what it's about, I think this is a good way into it.

Because he expands upon his criticisms of contemporary political science that you get in the introduction to The City of Man. And then he also delves into some sort of general observations about Aristotle's political science, which is the first chapter, is on Aristotle's politics, the first chapter of The City of Man. So I thought it was a sort of interesting essay as a sort of way into Strauss's turn to the ancient and as critique of contemporary political science. And was this published in his lifetime, lifetime Alexander Alexander, and what's kind of the background?

He starts the essay in an interesting way. It's an address. So what's the background? Yeah, so he was presented at a sort of conference around table at the University of Detroit in March of 1963.

At the time he was around that time, he had been teaching Aristotle's politics. And to read his courses, you'll see some very similar observations, especially in the introductory lectures. But The City of Man was published in 1964. And that's a kind of turning point in Strauss's career.

In the preface to the seventh impression of Natural History in 1972, I believe, he identifies his work starting in 1964 as the beginning of his sort of Socratic studies, which is strange because he did write some studies of Socratic works prior to that. But in a way, ancient works, the two pieces on Xenophon. But he had really, I think, not published anything on Plato until The City of Man. Really?

Yeah, I don't think he published any. Oh, that's amazing. He published a review of Eric Wilde or Earl Wilde. There's a book on Plato that he criticized, where he talks that length about Plato.

But as far as a commentary on the Platonic dialogue, I believe the first thing was The City of Man, which is crazy when you think about it. He was 65 years old. Right? Let me ask you a question.

It sounds silly, Alex, but do you think he was saving up his power, sort of building up his strength? I'm serious. I mean, to release it all. Yeah, and that's an interesting way of putting it, because you read sort of occasional remarks on Plato, even in his earlier works, like in Hobbes and stuff.

And it's already, even though it's on the cuss with his discovery of esotericism, already, his understanding of Plato is incredibly nuanced and really insightful. Before he's really, it seems, arrived at his sort of central interpretations, the tenets of his interpretation of the Republic. So yeah, I mean, it seems like he's spent some 30 years like he's marinated until he was able to write this incredibly powerful and influential essay. But anyways, I like this piece because I think it's a sort of nice self-contained, it's very introductory.

It has the feelings of him expanding on his thoughts. And it is more of a lecture style, rather than a sort of very compactly written book, a way that some of his works just race, you know, that quickly they go. So yeah, I like it. So I think it's interesting.

It's a pivotal period. And it's a good way into his sort of 1964 and on writings. It's a small point. I'm looking at the classes that he taught on Plato.

And he taught 157, 58. But it does seem like it starts taking up in the early 60s. And so yeah, that's kind of just interesting. Back to it seems like he was actually growing his thoughts here.

Yeah, and I think it's on the heels of Fox on Machuvelli. We should do something on that book at some point, but if we can never understand anything. But that was in 1959, right? And I think 58 or 59.

And when he publishes that work, that sort of completes a lot of his inquiries in the modernity that begin with his early books on Spinoza and Hobbes, both of which 0.2 Machuvelli in the background. And obviously, there's that very interesting section at the beginning. Well, it's the end of chapter four, in the beginning of chapter five of natural writing history, where Machuvelli is really important. So it seems like, into the 50s, he really recognizes now, from what I understand from what my former teacher Lawrence told me, he just taught Machuvelli to print in the discourses every quarter.

It's that the University of Chicago, they have a quarter system. He would teach one work and then the other every quarter, I think, for like a couple of years. So he really just sort of made it central to his work for a year, so you gotta sense something big happened. And back to the city man really quick before we launched into this crisis of our time.

You know, when you first pick up that book, it seems relatively straightforward. That is to say, I mean, you think you're following it along in a more or less rolling fashion. But the book gets deeper and deeper every time you reread it. I remember, was it Kennington that did a review of it, Alex?

Somebody reviewed city man and kind of blew the lid. Ben and Denny did it really interesting. Yeah, where I didn't realize just how deep the book goes, but when it needs it. So many of it's that in thoughts in Machuvelli, I think are typically the two contenders for people's favorite works by Strauss.

Yeah. Yeah. Greg, you're gonna jump in. What's your favorite works by the way?

I mean, it's thoughts on Machuvelli so hard. So I just learned, by the way, maybe I should have known I'm confessing my ignorance here. Is it thoughts on Machuvelli? No, it's, I'm sorry, it's city man and natural history, both began with the same term phrase.

It is proper. So I don't know what that tells you, but who knows? Do you have a favorite? I don't know.

I mean, chapters three and four of natural history are so powerful, but the city man, I think it has to be the city man for me. I mean, I just don't know Machuvelli well enough too. I appreciate it. It would just be meaningless.

Maybe is the first book that they published that was transcripts of course, notes, is symposium. I really enjoyed that. I learned so much from that. Just how to walk through a text.

I like to look back before all those class notes were so readily available. I like his essay on Lucretius. I think that's the right. Yeah, it's like 100 pages.

It's a little book. It's like a lack of the classic. I do like some of the shorter ones where it's essays that seem where the connection between was a very obvious of studies of platonic book. I realize it's a later one, the rebirth of classical political rationalism.

Just sort of his, just a short thing on the analysis, a short thing on the apology, short thing on the youth of the world. You find all that stuff so illuminating. A liberal education and responsibility? That's right.

Yeah, that's so good. We should do an episode on that major for the fall. You can already do that. Now we did the climb one.

Okay. Oh, that's right. That's right. You're the rain here by the way.

You guys hear that? It's like coming down and straining cats and dogs. Better purchasing galoshes. All right.

So what's the crisis work time? Where was this presented? Yeah, so it's presented at the University of Detroit. He makes a passing comment about how, what he says about political science, it's general, discipline, political policy, certainly not true at the University of Detroit while they've invited him.

But he, so it's two essays. But he makes clear in the beginning of the first one that it's really one lecture. It's supposed to hold together. And that dividing it into two the way that it is is not exactly accurate.

For this reason, I think it's in the Guilden collection of like 10 essays by Louis Strauss. They were put back together into one essay. But he makes clear, and I think this is maybe a better way to think of the piece that this subject is more precisely, and he puts this in quotes, the crisis of our time as a consequence of the crisis of political philosophy. Because the odd thing is, is the second essay is called the Crisis of Political Philosophy.

He says, in my first lecture, I've tried to trace the crisis of our time to the crisis of political philosophy. So he's already traced it. And he says, let me say one more word about this crisis of political philosophy. So in a way, I think you should maybe, I think he's giving you ample indication that you shouldn't think of one about the crisis of our time and the other about the crisis of political philosophy.

The first is really trying to get back to that crisis. Well, the second one is devoted by and large to some remarks on Aristotle's political science as he understands it, the way in which he recovers it. So Alex, two questions. There's our pushback here.

So the crisis of our time. So this is presumably, who are we, who is us, who's our time? He mentions this on page 42, I must remain as close as possible as what is today generally accepted in the West. So he's beginning from, I mean, this is generally accepted clearly, I mean, it ends with Aristotle as well.

So here I think his indication of the beginning that Strauss himself is employing Aristotle's method of political science. He's beginning from commonly held opinions. So it's the commonly held opinions presumably of those in the West, which I take to mean the non-communist world and non-third world as he goes on to say. And by the way, he points out that the third world is a distinction that was invented by the communist world, or that what we call the second world.

But isn't this hyperbolic, the crisis of our time? I mean, like this is the whole world crisis and it's really a crisis of political philosophy. And this is the 1963, you know, when was the few in Missile Crisis? The crisis of our time is really actually people just don't read Plato right.

I mean, this is a little preposterous, right? I was just playing the part at David Barr here. No, no, but I'm happy you, I'm happy you pointed that out Greg because once you become branded in this call, it's easy to kind of read this and then just, it washes over you. Well, of course, right.

It's the first time you know. Right, right, right. So I mean, like the ordinary citizen wouldn't be like, oh yes, the crisis of our time is obviously the result of the crisis of political philosophy, which is obviously the crisis of, you know, this perversion, Machiavelli Hobbes-Lach, lowering the standards and introducing technology, putting on the service of politics. You know, clearly that's the crisis of our time.

It may be, do you think he just simply has to use this kind of rhetoric? That's what I'm asking, is it just an interesting thing to do to attention? Well, to get your attention right. Is it may in fact be the crisis of our time, but we don't recognize it as such?

Well, it's 2022, not David. So we're in the clear. This was the crisis of the internet. Thanks be to God.

This was the crisis in 1963, but you and me were fine. Crisis of Verde, thanks to these two short essays. Right. Exactly.

These are great questions. It is the crisis of the West. And specifically he defines it as, the West is no longer certain of its purpose, right? And that purpose he makes clear is a universal purpose.

He says the following. He says, the crisis of the West is on page 44. And as always, if you guys want this text, just email us, we'll send it. We'll tweet this out.

Yeah, we'll tweet it out. We'll tweet out the PDF so I don't know if it'll be a bunch of emails. So he says, the crisis of the West consists in the West had to become uncertain of its purpose. The West was once certain of its purpose, of a purpose in which all men could be united.

Hence, it had a clear vision of its future as the future of mankind. We no longer have that certainty and that clarity, some of us even despair of the future. This despair explains many forms of contemporary Western degradation. And here's a crucial distinction I think gets at your point.

This is not meant to imply that no society can be healthy, unless it is dedicated to a universal purpose, to a purpose in which all men can be united. Society may be tribal and yet healthy. So when he says of our time, and he's talking about the crisis of the West, I think he means to exclude those who have not bought it into the Western universal projects, right? So this general human project to continue here just the next one.

But a society which was accustomed, as we are, to understand itself in terms of a universal purpose, cannot lose faith in that purpose without becoming completely bewildered. I think one of the things he's doing, and he's accepting his look, the West, and specifically means the West is committed to the modern project of relieving man's estate, of trying to solve our problems, to modern science and technology, and through liberal democracy. We're no longer convinced of it. We're faced with the threat of Eastern despotism and the form of communism.

And we're not exactly sure if we have good reasons to fight it at all, right? And so this is, I guess, he's speaking to fellow Westerners, sort of fellow late modern Europeans, and trying to ask to what extent this crisis can be resolved. Now, insofar as this has to do with modern thought, I think he's right to trace this particular crisis to a crisis of political philosophy. We are committed to universal goals, to trying to solve our problems through rational deliberation about the nature of political things, in such a way that's conducive to practice.

And yet we don't actually believe you can do that anymore. So we're a bit bewildered, lost in the woods, and then I need to get out. So I was struck by, you know, you mentioned this. I was wondering how much he's connecting the crisis to the, what ordinary folks would have thought was the real crisis, which was communism.

And I do wonder, you know, it seems to me that communism shares modern starting points. But this was the most critical I had ever seen Strauss with regard to communism, this is on page 46. And so I wonder if some of the lack of confidence, remember this in 1963, it seems to get worse in the 1970s, where the West really does lose its confidence and think of the sole unionism on the ascent and the West has declined. But anyway, here's on page 46.

It came to be seen then, there is not only a difference of degree, but of kind, between the Western movement and communism. And this difference was seen to concern morality, the choice of means. In other words, it became clearer than it had been for some time that no bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man. As long as there are men, there will be malice and be in hatred, hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ its course of restraints.

For the same reason, it could no longer be denied that communism will remain as long as it lasts, in fact, and not merely in name. Colin, the iron rule of a tyrant, which is mitigated or aggravated by its fear of palace revolutions. The only restraint in which the West includes some confidence is the tyrant's fear of the West's immense ability to power and quote. And here, just this tyrant's spell is going on, right?

And you mentioned, when is Antirani come out? Is there another very famous book? And you start to realize that, you become suspicious, I suppose, not realize it, that maybe the great tyrannical threat of modernity is in fact communism. Maybe it's also the threat posed by non-commissioned cogia or something like this.

The cogia of course was quite literally a communist. But Craig, I thought that earlier on in the very first page, he identifies the Boogie Man as Newton in modern science. So it's those darn fake cookies, man. They're just moment on the lips, the lifetime on the hips.

I'm telling me that, brother. At least those those cookies were awful. They were awful to take the hold stand here. Everybody was, I always.

No, you're right. This is the modern science is somehow different, right? What modern science completes, it's, or wins decisively with Newton. Yeah.

And that undermines, this is where we start getting to the Aristotle point. This is a good, I think, bridge. Maybe we want to talk about the communism a little more, but yeah, you can show is that you just sort of got to the sort of the apparent natural basis of Aristotle's political science, which is this teleological cosmology. He shows that the sort of spare assumptions of modern natural science, this non-teleological view, actually seems to get at real laws of nature in a way that other that ancient science just couldn't.

To point out, this is where I wonder, correctly from along here, if I'm just understanding your point, Greg, when you talk about like rhetorical exaggeration on Strauss's part, I found his association of communism with Eastern despotism to be the very strongest, obviously the infinities. I found that to be a bit of an exaggeration, right? I mean, you said it well, right? It's a tyrannical impulse within the West, right?

That's coming out here. And elsewhere in liberal education responsibility, actually you remember, right? He says Marx was more liberally educated than any of us might hope to be. So he seems to be sort of an outgrowth of certain inherent risk in the kind of energy he received.

Yeah, and to connect that to David's point, I mean, communism also, I mean, at least communism was in practice in the 20th century, and even I just read in Totsamarks last week. I mean, this is not a rejection of modern science. In fact, it's an abrasive modern science. And it departs from modern science only in this regard that Marx sort of thinks that, we've made enough science to the progress that we can now just cool it.

We don't have to worry anymore. We figured out how we don't have to work. Let's do that. Now, there's all these, of course, in the 1960s, there's space race getting heated up and this sort of thing.

So there does seem to be even within communism, this belief in modern science and its ability to sort of solve our problems. So they do seem at least together in that. And if we think that the problem is science and the problem is technology and the problem is modern tyranny, then we see that the liberal regime is similarly fascinated with science and technology. Yeah, and I think that might be what's being said with that comment about military power, right?

Right, right, right. You might be feasible to just sort of stop and say, you've got enough technology, we can keep things easy, let's just do it. But that assumes that you don't have multiple powers, right? That are struggling.

In which case, it's a strategic advantage, right, to innovate. And if you innovate, you know, to sort of extend, you have to force people to be working in these lines. You see some other thing actually happen with, you know, countries in the Middle East that are trying to live by religious law, right? On the one hand, they need to follow like, you know, Sharia on the other hand.

They need to buy it to mathematical physics with its assumptions in order to compete into a, you know, assert themselves on the world stage. And this creates, I think, eternal tensions, right, between the assumptions of the regime and the assumptions of the technology that they use. He also, I was wondering if you could explain a little bit, he also mentioned Spangler at the very beginning. Because I think that, or at least Shausen makes an important point that people, I think, confuse crisis and decline.

The two can be happening simultaneously, of course, but there's a difference. And he thinks that Spangler went some of the way in understanding this, but he got a few things wrong. And Shaus appeals to modern science to prove him wrong, but I didn't follow that. Yeah, I think the difficulty with Spangler that he identifies is that in order to say the West is engaged in a decline, you have to believe that we've reached a kind of peak, right?

And you're at the end of the road. And he suggests this is due to the influence of Hegel because the Alabama Nerva flies at dust. And he jell, why is it the end of history? And after that, it's boring.

Are you just kind of declined? But then he says, and I think this is a subtle point here. He says, the highest possibilities of man are exhausted. That's the spang as long as the fundamental riddles which confront man have not been solved to the extent to which they can be solved.

We may therefore say, appealing to the authority of science in our age. So he goes from this view that there might be fundamental riddles. But then he focuses specifically on the riddles for science in our age. There's a couple of questions you can ask here, which is one is, is trust agreeing with modern natural science?

Here, I mean, he certainly agrees that these are the presuppositions, right? It's admits of infinite progress. And therefore, there is no meaningful end or completion of history. But what other kind of riddles might there be?

Are these the fundamental riddles? Sort of the elusiveness of nature? That might be one part of it. But I think he might have other riddles in mind.

I mean, he brings this up in the discussion of aerosol, the question of justice, for example. If those riddles are there, then no, there is no necessary decline, right? There are still high human tasks. There is still a need for human beings of great character and virtue who can help us achieve the common good at times of crises and difficulty, right?

Spang would be wrong there for that there's a decline. There's a step eternal need, a continuing need of such individuals. It does sort of only maybe alluded to here. But in other works on tyranny, for example, this is actually on page 44 where I think he eludes this.

From the Communist Manifesto, it would appear that the victory of communism would be the complete victory of the West or the synthesis, which transcends the national boundaries of so-and-so. So he does seem open to the possibility that now with technology, one of these two regimes could win. And that would seem to hold out a deep problem for these riddles. I mean, I'm not being very clear, but in on tyranny, the notion that a single world government would really crowd out, make it very, very unlikely, unlikely than it already is philosophy, because there has to be, maybe I'm going to tease out why, but somehow a single world religion would just be fatal for human thought.

And he does hear at least point to that possibility. Yeah, I think so. I mean, the question ultimately comes down to whether Marx or Hegel or anybody has solved the political problem. Right.

And I think it can be solved, in fact, even if the problem hasn't been solved, I mean, it couldn't be the case that one of these regimes could... We're talking more about this just yesterday than day. What are the alternatives? What are the ways in which this all plays out?

And what is the totalized state? But the totalized state acknowledges the question, the questions are still not finally answered, it's as far as it has to compel human beings, right? Okay. I mean, the idea that history is a rational process that then reaches its culmination, right?

Shouldn't mean that we all recognize how sensible the ends are, right? But one thing he likes to point out about Marx is that Marx does not consider that people might look at the sort of this communist utopia, I just say, no. This is denaturing, dehumanizing to be just serving these needs, right? I want challenges, I want risks, right?

And that would imply that it hasn't backed to solve the political problem, because it fails to persuade these people. You see this on liberal democracies as well, right? You know, we try to increase prosperity, but there are still people who are angry who want something to fight for. And so what they often end up doing is fighting liberal democracy, or fighting the regime in which they live, because it doesn't give them an outlet for it.

That's very good. Should we talk about Eric Salem? Yeah, let's talk about it. That's switching gears too much.

No, I think that's good. I mean, one of the things he tries to do in the first essay, just maybe by way of transition, one of the things he tries to do is to make the case for taking Aristotle seriously, right? And this is, well, he takes issue with, I mean, it seems like he takes issue with philosophy and with political science, right? And the social sciences generally.

Yeah. 20th century philosophy, that is not just philosophy simply. Logical positism, social science, I mean, political science, none of these things seem to grasp the crisis clearly. Yeah, they don't grasp the crisis and they in a way beg the question, right?

Of whether the ancient understanding was adequate. He says, this is on the bottom of page 15. And a lot of this is familiar. If you've read the first two chapters of, and this is one of the reasons I like this piece, you can read the first two chapters of natural writing history, but you get certain elements of his critique.

It's obviously not as rich and full here. So now elements of his critique of positivism and of historicism here. And as well as the turn to the age. So on the bottom of the story, this reminds me of an epilogue too, that epilogue he wrote to that little green book that all the Shraozians wrote about sort of pulling apart and attacking the contemporary political science at this time, which seems to have been partly responsible for so many Shraozians struggling to find working with the science premise.

I was, I had an email exchange with someone about the review by Wollan and somebody else of that. Right, right, right. The response by Shraoz. And you could tell, I don't know what Wollan has read or hasn't read, but you know, Shraoz really did his homework studying his stories.

I mean, he was raised among these sorts of figures. And he had obviously studied Weber extremely carefully. You read that chapter on Weber in natural writing history. And it's just a tour de force.

The footnotes are unbelievably thorough. Like, Shraoz has done his homework and it's hard to deny, right? And it's pretty devastating as a critique. Now, later in his career in essays like this, when he's beginning of the city of man or in an epilogue especially, he I think feels as though he's sort of, he's wanted the authority to speak on this without having to show all that work.

He can speak more authoritative. And he says the following, he says, social science, sorry, now, regardless of whether the superiority of the scientific understanding to the prescientific understanding, can we demonstrate it or not? The scientific understanding is surely secondary or derivative. That is, it comes out of the prescientific understanding.

You've got to give the example, just gave by the way, that this is the social scientist. You're going to give it, you're going to give it. Yeah, you give it. Like, how it presupposes it.

It's pretty funny, right? I took these classes on survey methods. I am a social scientist, by the way. So on the top of my, I'm very offended actually, that's what I'd say this, but you know, these polling and stuff, they say go out and do a poll and they never have to stick, you know, don't ask dogs or trees.

Like, it presupposes that you know what a human being is and the best person you do to a polling. And it's kind of ridiculous example that Strauss gives, but I think it's successful because of its ridiculousness. Yeah, I mean, there's so much that is presupposed by so-called science, right? And that's just one example.

You're going to poll people, you have to know what a person is, what's a human being? And this actually gets us something he brings up with Aristotle, which is Aristotle presupposes, and he's replacing the cosmology with this, presupposes the notion of essential differences. That there is an essential difference between man and beast, for example, that is accessible to common. Yeah, the state of Ohio exists on it, by the way.

Much to your chirping. Yeah. But so one thing that was half man, half big creatures, well, I asked where they came from. What is Chiron?

I asked you, huh? What is that? But one of the things here that I thought was kind of interesting was, I wonder if this is connected to Strauss's famous line about the cave within the cave. So it seems like what Strauss is saying here doing here is like, we are so imbibed, we are so imbibed, we are so just sort of saturated with this scientific worldview that seems to take work to recover the common sense view of the world.

And it seems like there's a language here on page 1551 that leads me to sort of like, oh, the language seems somewhat reminiscent of Plato's cave, but it seems like Strauss is trying to get us into the cave. Yeah. We're so messed up that we don't even have a common sense view of the world anymore. Up is down, down is up, left is right, dog is man.

There are other examples. And so he's just trying to get us there to the point of view of the citizen of the statesman. It somehow, the cave has somehow vulgarized science. The cave beneath the cave is vulgarized science, sorry.

Very much. And the cave beneath the cave image is powerful because where did that cave come from? It's manate, right? It's not the natural starting point.

By natural Strauss means the prescientific. So are the early modern thinkers? Are they the cave diggers? Like so, yeah.

It's this, you see this in various ways, but the way, maybe this is too far, but the way in which Bacon or Descartes presupposed a sort of humanistic version of Christian reality. Oh, yeah, right. And then use that to create a universal sort of human project. In a way, we haven't gone back to those opinions about the good.

And from there, gone back and done this sort of archaeology through the history of political force. You want to talk about the difference in kind. And this is definitely point I wanted to see, like there's something, the old fashioned philosophy somehow grasps something more clear about reality as far as it grasps the reality is comprised of different species of beings. And it's more stuff there.

Because right as you point out, I can't wait to talk about that as you point out, right? The survey has to presuppose us cannot do their work. Right. So just to keep reading that passage from before, because I think this will help.

I'm 51, so I'm a 50. And social science, because it is secondary derivative cannot reach clarity about its doings if it does not dispose of a coherent and comprehensive understanding of what we may call the common sense understanding of political things, which precedes all scientific understanding. In other words, if we do not primarily understand political things as they are experienced by the citizen or statesman, right? You have to go back to that.

And he makes this point elsewhere. Perhaps this critique was done in the 17th century. We don't go over that. We presuppose this done.

And therefore we ourselves as scientists miss that. And so then he makes the case, he says, look, if you want to get to the natural or ordinary understanding of political things, there's no place to look at ourselves politics. That is the common sense of view based on ordinary experience. Yeah.

I understand where do people go wrong? It seems so obvious to anybody that gives it just a few minutes off. I suspect it was going to start. Is it what Charles says?

It's just we think the summit has been mounted and no need to investigate further. So our starting points just for down the origins. And now we have new starting points or what? I think it's a number of factors.

But one, I think that it was the intentional suppression of those kinds of questions by people who raised them. So Hobbs. Yeah, we're talking. Well, I think Hobbs and Machiael and Locke and Bacon and Descartes did answer these questions.

So I think they had them worked out a little more satisfactorily for themselves than they expressed others. Like Hobbs, I think, nearly explicitly wants people to stop worrying about these kinds of questions for practical reasons, not for theoretical scientific reasons. So that's part of it. So that's one of the things that I'm looking at.

I think it's really important to have to look at the future. I think that we've been making a lot of decisions about the potential, and we've been making a lot of decisions about the potential suppression of people thinking about these things. So they saw it politically. It led to conflict.

But I also think that there was just a fascination with, it started to make it extraordinarily successful. And so people started focusing on the method and the things that we could replicate and the power, it became so powerful. So, how could you bossy down? Yeah, Eric Gabbler would have.

Yeah. I'm just like, we can go to them, how are you down in the starting points? Right. Why do the bossies, right?

works ready to geometry, the meteorology, and then the dioptrix. And in these works, he says, look, you want to know all the things that I'm promising you? Just go take a look at what I've done. Bacon couldn't do that.

Bacon had to give a cursory example of discussion of heat and the new organ on, but he wanted it. He thought you should collect all the data first, get all the data exists, and then start doing the science. Descartes just sort of was like, here's a couple of things I've done, but look at how well I've done. And then when you look at works like hardy or something like that, you realize that approaching things mathematically is really powerful.

One of the things experiences that I've had really modern philosophy is that you read Bacon's critique of the ancients, and you're just like, this isn't a play to an Aristotle I know. This isn't the way you see Machiavelli's idealism. And this is a credit to Strauss in particular. We would buy into this if you did not have him.

But Strauss gives you an understanding of ancient political philosophy that escapes this modern critique. And we could go down a rabbit hole here. But I think it's really his discovery. He lays this out in Farabi's Plato, but he's discovery of a holy political reading of Plato that eschews the metaphysical.

And he suggests that these are merely exoteric that guides into a Plato that can withstand the modern critique. And in a way, what he does with Aristotle in the second essay here is a classic example of this recovery of the ancient position in light of the modern critique, right? The way he says just a quote one line before he gets a grad. He says on page 53, the crisis of our time may have the accidental advantage of enabling us to understand in an untraditional, a fresh manner, what was hitherto understood only in a traditional derivative.

That is to the eyes of the moderns. In the eyes of the medievals, specifically the Scholastics. Yes, yes. Yes.

We can look at them now fresh without having to go through this classic setting. I was going to talk about this on page 92. One of the things that really interesting that we do in episode at some point on aerosols biology is what are species? So you mentioned already the sort of the storytelling, but the attempts to sort of look at different kinds.

So I'm on the bottom of page 92. And there is a problem in aerosol, I think, and it's the following. Aerosol took for granted the permanence of the species. And we quote, no, the species are not permanent.

And this is something that actually I sort of try to understand. But even granting the evolution is an established fact that man has come to being out of another species. Man is still essentially different from non-man. The fact of essential differences, the fact that there are quote forms, has in no way been refuted by evolutionism.

The starting point of aerosol as well as a play that was that the whole consists of heterogeneous beings, that there is a noetic heterogeneity of beings, this common sensible notion on which we fall back all the time. And this has in no way to interfere with it just real quick, noetic heterogeneity. If you're not fully sort of initiated into all the straws, the mysteries just means the world is comprised of things that are intelligible to us. There are different things that we can understand with the mind.

Sounds very fancy, but it doesn't mean something. But what's interesting here is there's the way that modern science tries to expose of aerosolianism, especially as it came to be understood in the medieval times. And he gives this example, Strauss doesn't, I want to give it as well, because Strauss then says, well, modern science doesn't fall into the strap that this medieval scholasticism did. But I think that it does.

Here's Strauss on the bottom of page 92. This is the famous 17th century criticism of formal causes. So this is aerosol, a criticism which was properly presented in its most impressive form by a comic poet, Mollier, of the famous scholastic question, quote, why does opium make men sleep? End quote.

And the answer, I don't know, Len, so I'll just skip to English, because it has a dormitive power, a sleep-making power, the nature of which consists in putting the sense of sleep. This is a pretty famous joke. Why does opium make you go to sleep? Well, because it's got a sleep-inducing power.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, I was actually, I wasn't talking to him, I was listening to a conversation that a friend of mine who was having with a student and the student asked why I can't really ask. But it was, why is this thing emit heat? And my friend that came and said, oh, it's because it's exothermic. And of course, I just laughed in my head because I'm like, well, that word just means emit heat.

So I mean, that's no different than the sort of this formal causality is understanding about these medieval scholastics, right? Like, why does it have a sleep-making power? Why does this make you go to sleep? Oh, because it has a sleep-in power.

Why does this emit heat? Oh, because it has a heat power. It's the same thing thing. And we can't really get around it.

And then Strauss goes on to say that, actually, this is precisely what we're interested in opium, is why does it have this power? And that power of it is the thing that makes it the most interesting. I think there's something to it. So I think that modern science tries to think that it's escaped these questions of formal causality that's so important to Aristotle.

But I think it just comes right in the back door. And I think it does because Aristotle is, he understands that when we want to understand something, we want to understand what it is. And that material causality that causality alone doesn't satisfy that deep-long and understand what that thing is. I don't know.

And we can turn this to politics, of course. No, no, but I mean, to pick up on this idea of things coming in the back door, I'll just point it at that point. I feel like that turn of phrase should I should have maybe chosen. So this remark about Moulière, this why does it make men's sleep?

He's getting this from Nietzsche. Nietzsche quotes this line. Well, the Moulière can't be getting that from Nietzsche. No, Strauss is getting it from Nietzsche.

Nietzsche quotes Moulière. Got it. And beyond good and evil. And so he's quietly sort of invoking him.

And it's in a way, this is just the Socratic turn of the Fido, which is a remarkably important passage because you see there a direct critique of the attempt to reduce things to efficient causality. Right. Right. And it turns out that Fisci calls out, he doesn't help.

And so what does Socrates do? He says, okay, you think this is beautiful? Okay, why? Because it partakes of the beautiful itself.

What is that? Right. And so you just accept or assume that there is this one thing as just from others. Now, I think Socrates is perfectly willing to accept that the lines that separate these heterogeneous things, right, these things that are other than one another.

He's not as strict as it initially appears. Right. So there's the example right of the Moul. Right.

So he holds, nature is what is always or for the most part. Yeah, for the most part. Yeah. Which is a lot of luck and happens.

Yeah, that's a lot of, a lot of the. But we don't let them avoid that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the rule is interesting because you would think there's a donkey and then there is a horse. But every now and then a horse is slum and he gets with a donkey and it produces a Moul, which is not able to be produced. Right.

So this is a kind of, you know, monster of nature that occurs only. Well, yeah, I mean, dude, if you're a horse, a beautiful horse, you think you're going to be all into the donkey, right? You know what's down the dock? You know what the English word for the sound of donkey makes it?

That's a, it's a braid. So it's a donkey's or a braid or a. Yeah. That's not a horse, but the son of a horse makes it out, right?

And not a horse, donkey. Doggy, sorry, sorry. I was trying to, I was trying to. Yes.

Yeah. And no, but he's. But it's not an hospitality. Right.

So the, yeah. So, but you know, you could make that attempt to say, well, you know, it doesn't really help to just assume that there are these heterogeneous things by nature, right? But then you go back to the social scientists, right? And the very thing he talks about here from these, these assume in the way that we even approach the world that just goes to show the sort of derivative character of this move.

Yeah. There's a lot. Again, there's a lot that's. And a deeper level of either.

I mean, what's the subtitle of the also bodies one on human nature? So I mean, by presupposing that it knows what human is, it's a thing for nonhuman. I mean, there's a, there's a comical point, which of course, everyone knows what human being is by common sense. But there's a deeper philosophical point that actually most of us probably don't know what it means to be human.

Yeah. That there are these terms used in ordinary experience and you can point out, right? You can almost without failure, right? Point out human being versus non-humans.

You're really good at it. And he had. Usually sometimes man against fully. I'm not going to lie.

Yeah. Okay. That's not a person. But if you had an LOP shot, I didn't know.

Have you ever seen those like, I'll be. Yeah. They're jacked. They're terrifying.

They're terrifying. Yeah. But I don't want to. Sorry.

Maybe I'll give you a back on track. I know when you do read it. What does this mean for the study of politics, right? And this is not for me.

I was when I started teaching comparative politics years ago. I got hired as a sort of utility player when I first jobs and they're like, can you teach comparative politics? And I'm like, yeah, sure. And I just sort of, you know, officially decided I was going to teach Aristotle to start the class.

Mostly because I was interested in, but then I realized no, Aristotle actually, you know, of course we study these things for the reason. Like I also actually has a better framework for understanding, comparative politics than does contemporary politics. And one of the things that he makes clear is right, you want to understand a thing, you need to understand its, the four causes, its formal cause, the fish cause, final cause, which one of my missing material cause. And so then I think it was with Strauss's help, but I think I may have read it in my own and then just saw in this article in an epilogue that, you know, to understand the regime is to understand its material cause, which is principally the people but also the geography, you know, the nature of the place where people are, the efficient cause, of course, the founders, but then the founders give the regime a certain goal and the formal and final causes are deeply related and stressed draws us out.

And I say that you had us read here that the formal cause and final cause regime are deeply connected. So, you know, in the United States of America, we believe in freedom and equality, and that leads to a certain shape of government, right? So like if we didn't believe in, if we believe in a natural, you know, superiority of a certain class that might incline a sort of aristocracy, but use to the goal of the regime freedom, qualities sort of affects the shape of the regime who rules. And this is one reason that I think Alvarabi, my mother sort of, that lies these two clauses together.

But you know, this is common sense. Like I think I've talked about this before on show, but I apologize, but you want to understand the regime, you know, how do you understand it? I think it's temporary social science sort of through the back door, you still get the material causality, you get the sufficient cause, you get all this stuff. But the one thing it seems to be missing is the formal causality.

What is the goal of the regime? And I sort of as I comically had thought this to students, I was like, you want to understand what the goal of the regime is? Look at how the rulers dress, and they will, how they dress will tell you what that regime is about. So Mal always were peasant garbs early on, right?

Because the idea was that communism was about helping peasants out. Stalin added FLS once the Soviet Union changed from communism to a military commons, right? World War Two was like this. Americans are rulers, we don't call them rulers, of course, our representatives, of course, they were suits, business suits, because the business of America's business.

So there's this way that, I mean, once you see that, I mean, it's such a simple obvious thing. Like Iran, like Alex's, relatively rare religious garb because they think that the goal of that regime is piety or something like that. So you start seeing that, yeah, this is what drives the regimes is really their goal, the purpose, what are they trying to do with this? And all these other social scientific times to understand what these various, these states are about, seem to miss the market because they want to stay in neutral with respect to values.

But it's not lacking objectivity to sort of say, well, here is what their goal is. This is the goal of that particular kind of regime. Yeah, and to recognize that that's a fundamental feature of life is, you know, to treat those and to analyze those, the variety of them and assess them is not something that a modern social science can do. Right.

It's not something that allows itself to do. Now, just to go back to this point about what, uh, a stress is saying about these essential differences. He says, if there are essential differences, as there must be, there can be essential differences between the common good and the private good. That essential difference is all the difference in the world, right?

Classical political philosophy, right? It's a whole problem that they, that they make thematic and who's, you know, surmounting the goal to be impossible, right? It's not going to be finally, but here he connects it now back to Aristotle's cosmology. However, for the defeat of Aristotle's cosmology may extend, it does not go to the length of having to store the evidence of the concept of essential differences and therefore of essences.

Okay. Yeah, maybe there aren't internal species. Maybe we'll have to go with that. That doesn't defeat Aristotle's political science.

And let me go a little bit further this later. He, this is on page nine. I found this so strange. Because I'm not sure Aristotle does believe in, I mean, I'm not sure he does believe in the permanent subspecies, by the way.

No, I don't think so either. Okay. And he's just long and lasting from our point of view. Yeah.

And there's, look, he might propose it, but he's writing in a very different time, right? So write about political science or try to make the case where we're sort of, we're listening to political science when there's still a polis, right? Or there, and there's still, you know, a sort of civil religion. Yeah.

No, I'm sorry. There's a real deeply related political religion within the community, right? He's very different from trying to revive it in a pluralistic egalitarian democracy. So you have to, I think, be a little more open.

But, you know, it's not, it's not an openness that comes with risk because we're already so cynical now it's actually somewhat less cynical. That's a good point. That's a good point. You know, it's one thing though, to sort of recognize that species might come and go, like dinosaurs are along with this sort of objection.

But if everything that is composite comes into being will pass away, then you can sort of think about even more elemental beings. And is it the case that, you know, the table of elements will want to go away, excuse me, and that maybe it's the case that, you know, two hydrogens and an atom, I mean, could there be a different arrangement of matter and then otherwise currently exists? I mean, I think you take Aristotle's principle seriously, that comes to being, it's coming to being a pass away, then one has to think about the complete sort of restructuring of what material existence would look like. I mean, not just dogs and animals, but water.

You know, hydrogen, stuff like that. So, on page 99. Yeah, but this is I think. That was very dark.

Why was that dark? Was that really dark? I mean, no, it's good. I mean, it seems, I will say it's for what it seems like, it seems like the more elemental to being the longer lasting it is.

It seems like hydrogen is more lasting than water, which is more lasting than dog. Yeah, but I mean, that's just, okay. But not permanent. Not permanent.

Yeah. So, so connected to this, right? He says on page 99, the relation of the regime to what is not the regime, to society corresponds to the general metaphysical distinction used by Aristotle between form and matter. Now, by saying metaphysical, Strauss seems to have reverted to the old Aristotle, right?

But here he clarifies, metaphysical means the same as common sensible or a sensical, we would say here, right? So the metaphysical is that which is true according to common sense. The beginning of the next paragraph, he says again, speaking empirically or common sensibly. So the metaphysical is the common sensical is the empirical.

Now, this is something strange is going on here, right? So just as he's sort of allowed Aristotle's cosmology to fall to the side, he's also allowed Aristotle's metaphysical thought to somehow be tied to empiricism. Now, the empiricism here is not the empiricism of modern natural science collecting data, you know, by just sort of analyzing facts. This is the empiricism that's rooted in what he often refers to as the natural understanding, right?

In the sense of the pre philosophic or pre-scientific worldview. So in a way, what he's saying is you can have an empirically based metaphysics, right? Or a very thin metaphysics, right? But if you're going to have that still, you need to begin from the primary experiences or Emmerai, right?

The primary facts or data, and the primary facts of data is the ancient colus, as we're dealing with aerosols, politics. And so, I mean, one of the conclusions we're sort of drawn to is to say, Aristotle's political science isn't a way the most scientific starting point for this reason, absent the metaphysics and the reasons that led him to assert his metaphysical or cosmological claims. Yeah. For us, by the way, that thing that we know, speaking empirically or common sensibly, is that every society is characterized by the fact that it looks up to something.

So there's that formal causality. Every regime has a goal. Yeah. So maybe just to wrap this up, I'll go to the last paragraph.

Sure. Listen, we'll just end here. He asserts at one point Aristotle's understanding of happiness is a sort of kind of wolf from fulfillment in the political community. But then in the last paragraph, he raises the obvious problem here, which is that for Aristotle, there's a difficulty, not for the ordinary citizen, because for Aristotle, the highest end of the individual is contemplation and not the doing of noble deeds.

And so what he ends up arriving at is the tension between the city and man. Right. So again, I mentioned this earlier, but I do think this is a good essay or a pair of essays to read prior to reading the city of man. Then we start reading the introduction and the chapter on the politics.

A lot of it will be familiar while also going into greater detail and nuance. But I mean, he leads you up to it, I think quite carefully, and it's pretty rich despite being a lecturer. I do think there's quite a lot in there. Is there a solution to the crisis of our time and we'll experience?

I was just talking about the chapters of the city of man. I see. It would be fun to do this with the Quranic writing series on them or something. Is there anything in the Quranic writing series?

No, that's the Quranic writing series. It would be the city of man and the Socrates of the Quranic books. Sure. That sounds great.

Let's do it. I've got, you know, however many years left on this planet before I turn into something composite with the degrades. Yeah, the creating before your iPhone slots now, I'm like, that's in the last two weeks that's happened. What's that?

Yeah, I don't know. It's like marks on your son. I know like that little brown spots around your forehead. Oh, like Mr.

Burns has and stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Like Mr. Burns. Unlike frickin' Mr. Burns.

Yeah, except you have the, you're in better shape than 22 year old. Wow. What was up with some others? Did you want to sleep with Mr.

Burns? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was kind of like a weird, I couldn't tell if it was just... It's funny that the characters changed our times back in the day.